A gripping account of the
courage and humanity of firefighters at the Pentagon on 9/11, marred by
flawed account of American Airlines Flight 77

"Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11," by Patrick
Creed and Rick Newman, is a gripping account of the courage and humanity of
firefighters, and their heroic efforts at the Pentagon on September 11,
2001. But it is marred by a highly flawed account of American Airlines
Flight 77 that contradicts the physical evidence, witness testimony, and the
views of pilots and engineers.

Creed and Newman write:

- "The plane crossed Washington Boulevard, . . . traveling more than 500
miles per hour and was less than 30 feet off the ground."

- "the planes wings knocked over several light poles that line the road."

- "As the Flight 77 flew nearly to ground level, its right wing sliced into
a 750 kilowatt generator . . . The plane's right engine ripped a hole in a
fence near the generator . . . the left engine grazed the grass . . . Both
wings began to break apart, hurling metal fragments into the air."

- "The nose of the plane hit the facade, . . . about 14 feet above the
ground, going 530 miles per hour."

- "The airplane's tail, 45 feet tall, was still attached to the plane as it
plowed into the Pentagon."

- "The body of the hijacker who had been flying the plane ended up in the D
Ring about 107 feet from the point of impact."

- "The punch-out hole . . . was created by explosive energy".

Creed and Newman's account, based on statements by unverified witnesses, is
contradicted by more qualified witnesses.

Standing in front of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamie McIntyre,
CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent since November 1992, reported: "From my
close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere
near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small
enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail
sections, wing sections, fuselage - nothing like that anywhere around which
would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon.
. . . It wasn't till about 45 minutes later . . . that all of the floors
collapsed."

Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher, incident commander at the Pentagon
on September 11, corroborates Jamie McIntyre's report. At the September 12,
2001, DoD briefing, when asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at
all?" said: "there are some small pieces of aircraft ... there's no fuselage
sections and that sort of thing."

Victoria Clarke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs -
"presenter" of the DoD briefing, did not contradict Chief Plaugher.
American Airlines, Flight 77, Boeing, Dulles, and passengers were
not mentioned at the briefing.

Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who from her fifth-floor, B Ring office at the
Pentagon, witnessed "an unforgettable fireball, 20 to 30 feet in diameter,"
was called for stretcher duty. She describes "a strange absence of airliner
debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure
one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence
or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense, who
in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed
into the Pentagon as a 'missile'."

Barbara Honegger, military affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate
School, writes that NORAD's: "Gen. Larry Arnold, revealed that he ordered
one of his jets to fly down low over the Pentagon shortly after the attack
that morning, and that his pilot reported back that there was no evidence
that a plane had hit the building."

Doubts among the firefighters as to what struck the Pentagon are noted by
Creed and Newman.

They write: "Denis Griffin . . . had been working in the
aftermath of the attack all day, and seen wreckage that looked like it could
be from an airplane, but there were so many wild stories going around that
he wasn't sure what to believe."

Two statements in the book by Creed and Newman are striking:

- "FBI photographer Jennifer Combs (formerly Jennifer Farmer) went far out
of her way to pull hundreds of photographs from archives and narrate all of
them".

How did they get access to these photographs, when others have Freedom of
Information Act requests pending for these photographs and Pentagon videos?

- "Plaugher came by . . . 'We think it's al Qaeda,' he said, citing a
villain many of them had never heard of."

What would cause Plaugher, Fire Chief of Arlington County, to make such a
statement so soon after 9/11? Plaugher now serves as "a key member of the
IAFC Terrorism Committee."

Creed is an amateur historian, volunteer firefighter, and U.S. Army Reserve
officer who recently returned from a tour in Iraq as civil affairs officer
with the Army's Special Operation's Command. Newman is an award-winning
journalist and staff writer for U.S. News & World Report.

It should be noted, that to this day, Bin Laden is not wanted for 9/11 at
the FBI's Most Wanted, and the only evidence offered by the government to
substantiate their claim of Flight 77 having struck the Pentagon is a fuzzy
video that proves nothing - indeed the flight recorder data released by the
government shows that a plane flew about 400 feet above the Pentagon.